Calvin: There is a proverb, but it's not that enlightening. It says it takes 1000 games to reach shodan. What this means, however, is open for debate. In some variations of the proverb it means replaying pro games and not just playing games yourself. Certainly 1000 thoughtless blitz games will not do it. There are countless double-digit kyu players on IGS with more than 1000 games racked up. According to James Kerwin 1P, Most players will never reach shodan in their lives---they will either give up the game or simply stagnate at a particular rank. But some can do it in less than a year with enough talent and hard work. So the analogy to a martial arts black belt is a good one.

Dieter: Talented, dedicated people nowadays can do it in year and a half, due to the presence of Go Servers and studying material on the net. Restricted to real life play and instruction, these dedicated talents mostly need three to five years, because good opponents and teachers are harder to find in clubs. I think that shodan is reachable for anybody who is dedicated, whatever his talent, but it may take ten years to get there.

DrStraw: When I started playing 31 years ago it was generally accepted that "1000 games to reach shodan" was reasonable. There was no internet and not too many books, so this meant that by playing 10 games a week at the local club you could reach shodan in two years. Of course, without the online resources, a serious student would spent a lot of time studying alone. Nowadays, with people logging on and playing several games each day, it is possible to play 1000 games in a matter of months and so I do not think that the proverbs is still valid. However, 1000 serious games should be more than enough to reach the goal. By serious I mean a game in which you either thought a lot during the play or reviewed it extensively afterwards.

Thad: Just to quantify what DrStraw said: recently I was watching a game by Minue. There was a particular move that confused me and could not be explained to my satisfaction by kibitzers. Unfortunately I could not ask him the logic of the move until three games later. Not only could he remember the move that I asked him about, he could remember the sequence leading up to it.

One of the biggest talents needed for Go is a strong ability to do pattern matching. In order to be able to do pattern matching, you must have a lot of patterns "in your tank". Understanding when they work, and understanding when they don't. Playing a 1000 games eseentially "fills your tank".

Games which you do not remember, and in particular, blitz games, do not "fill your tank". For that to happen, you need to have large chunks of you games memorised. ( Not necessarily whole games, but enough to discuss aspects of them. )

This also includes other factors which inhibit memorisation, for example games where your jusgement is inhibited ie drunk or very tired.

DrStraw: Excellent analogy. Wish I had thought of that myself, but I will certainly use it in the future.

(moved from QuickQuestions)

It seemed that the
time needed to reach shodan became shorter
the later (more afterwards) you asked the people (who had reached it).

Example: Someone just made shodan in five years and says so.
Some years later that'll be 4 years.

In August 2005 I played a game with "Kong Jie's teacher" (perhaps to ask more money from me), 7 dan amateur (Chin. H3 (diagonal: 3-4 + tengen + 4-3); result W+3, Chinese counting, I felt as if I was ahead, strange). He was very strong at the fundamentals (if I can judge that at all) and most of his moves came instantaneously. This as an introduction.

The room was used by about 10-15 people, mostly kids, who where playing adults (i.e. "Kong Jie's teacher" played simultaneously with 2-3 kids). After my game (1-to-1) came a boy (10 years, 4 dan) and asked me for a game. I accepted, of course, but told him that most probably I would not be able to finish the game as I wanted to be home with the family at a certain time. In one of the first corners I think that he plays hamete with me or that at least I do not know the correct continuation and are not satisfied with my moves. So, I ask him during the game that I know that I must have made a mistake somewhere and whether he would be so kind and explain it later to me. Later he discussed it with the 7 dan and they quickly laid some variations on the table and it was just one simple "Zwischenzug" and it's ok. Once you see it you understand. I do not know what would have happened in the middle game as I had to leave than quite soon, but also he played quite quick.

Anyway, to the point, the boy told me that he plays Go just for 1 year! (his father said "two years", but still).

I think that is what you can achieve if you play regularly (only?) with about amateur 7dans (as he most probably did).

Do not learn wrong or inferior concepts, jump those steps!
Almost all of us in the West will have had incremental steps of learning + de-learning:
old vs. new concepts & shapes

The more intensive you learn, the less time "wrong" concepts can have time to settle.
For children holds my own idea of learning as well: their brain is not so filled up with other stuff, hence new stuff can easier absorbed.

BTW, in that house was also one player who claimed to be 1 dan professional and it was close to TianTan?, thus also to the ZhongGuo WeiQi Yuan?. So perhaps these boys were preparing themselves to become professionals.

It is safe to say that, for a majority of Kyu players (80%), it would take around 4,000-5,000 games to remain in the Kyu trap on 9x9. See research paper in Biblopgraphy, The Art of 9x9 Go, 2nd Edition, http://www.goo.gl/xmwcuy.

On 9x9, it takes around 1.5 - 29 years, depending on the nunber of games played per day. See full research results at https://sites.google.com/site/artof9x9go/agagr1-1?pli=1#password

"It takes 10,000 lost games to become shodan" , or something like that, is what I heard of. Seeing your weaknesses and learning from them is why it is supposed to be loses, rather than just "games." More recently, it has been said it takes 10,000 lost games to become "9 dan," since there are many shodans who haven't lost 10,000 times yet.